| GEO Business | | BD plans to invest $10b in energy, power sectors | Updated at: 2017 PST, Thursday, November 19, 2009
 DHAKA: Bangladesh plans to set up a fund that will invest as much as $10 billion in energy and power projects within the next decade to resolve an electricity shortage, a senior official said.
“The potential demand for electricity is maybe twice as much as we are producing now,” Chowdhury said in an interview in Dhaka. “It’s not just trying to meet today’s gap; it’s trying to stay ahead of the curve, which is going to be very difficult.”
The government has faced a “twin problem” of a shortage in the supply of natural gas, its primary fuel for power, and generation capacity since it came to power in January, Chowdhury said. Former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia did “very little exploration” when she was in power from 1996 to 2001, he added.
The nation of 162 million people, whose economy is half the size of Singapore, aims to add another 5,000 megawatts of daily power generation capacity in the next five years, Chowdhury said.
Demand exceeds the current capacity by about 1,000 megawatts at the “peak hour,” excluding “a lot of areas” in Bangladesh which don’t have access to electricity, he said. |  |
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